This article argues that (a) ego, or self, is an organization of knowledge, (b) ego is characterized by cognitive biases strikingly analogous to totalitarian information-control strategies, and (c) these totalitarian-ego biases junction to preserve organization in cognitive structures. Ego's cognitive biases are egocentricity (self as the focus of knowledge), "beneffectance" (perception of responsibility for desired, but not undesired, outcomes), and cognitive conservatism (resistance to cognitive change). In addition to being pervasively evident in recent studies of normal human cognition, these three biases are found in actively functioning, higher level organizations of knowledge, perhaps best exemplified by theoretical paradigms in science. The thesis that egocentricity, beneffectance, and

In this chapter we establish what it is for something to be implicit or explicit. The approach to implicit knowledge is taken from Dienes and Perner (1999), which relates the implicit-explicit distinction to knowledge representations. What it is for a representation to represent something implicitly or explicitly is defined and those concepts are applied to knowledge. Next we will show how maximally explicit knowledge is naturally associated with consciousness. We argue that each step in a hierarchy of explicitness is related to the unity of consciousness and that fully explicit knowledge should be associated with a sense of being part of a unified consciousness. New evidence indicating the extent of people's implicit or explicit knowledge in an implicit learning paradigm will then be presented. This evidence will indicate people can be consistently correct in dealing with a context-free grammar while lacking any knowledge that they have knowledge. 1.

The term self-deception describes the puzzling situation in which a person appears both to know and not know one and the same thing. Consider as an example a cancer patient who maintains the expectation of recov-ery even while surrounded by the signs of an incurable malignancy. Presumably this patient knows unconsciously that the disease is incur-able, but manages to prevent that knowledge from becoming conscious. Interestingly, one uf the reasons for concluding that the patient uncon-sciously knows of the incurable malignancy is the very success of the defense. How could that defense be maintained so effectively without using knowledge of the unwelcome fact to anticipate the forms in which it might try to intrude into consciousness? THE PARADOX OF SELF-DECEPTION The sense in which this example is puzzling, or paradoxical, is shown in Fig. 3.1. Some encountered situation, or stimulus, is assumed to receive both unconscious and conscious analyses. The unconscious analysis, which is assumed to occur first, identifies a threatening, or anxiety-evoking, aspect of the stimulus. In Fig. 3.1, the anxiety-evoking stimulus is represented as some proposition, p-such as, "I have a terminal ma-lignancy. " Conscious analysis, however, fails to apprehend this proposi-tion. There are three puzzling aspects of this situation. First, how can the person manage unconsciously to reach the conclusion that proposition p is true while not also reaching that conclusion consciously? Second, what good does it do for the person not to know consciously that p is true? Should it not produce anxiety just to know unconsciously that p is

Motor function recovery after stroke typically plateaus after six months. Case re-ports suggest that hypnosis has the potential to stimulate further recovery of function beyond this period. A pilot clinical investigation of hypnosis-aided recovery of motor function after stroke is presented. Baseline hand motor performance was quantified for six stroke subjects with a force-following task. Brain activity during the task was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). After cognitive training with hypnosis for improved motor performance, subjects performed the task again. Reaction times and muscle contraction and relaxation rates improved signif-icantly after hypnosis and changes persisted during follow up testing at two weeks. Hypnosis versus baseline fMRI results show increased activation extent in bilateral sensorimotor cortex with an ipsilateral shift in laterality. No significant differences were found in motor performance or fMRI results when the unaffected hand performed the task as a control condition. The autonomic physiology of hypnosis was studied by correlating heart rate vari-

The ‘Hard Problem ’ in Social Context Do you think the quotation in my title is reasonable or unreasonable? I find it unreasonable, but I know that many will not. Two people can react to the same idea, opinion, or data in opposite ways, and the reasons

The question of addiction concerns the process by which drug-taking behavior, in certain individuals, evolves into compulsive patterns of drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior that take place at the expense of most other activities, and the inability to cease drug-taking, that is, the problem of relapse. In this paper we summarize one view of this process, the “incentive-sensitization ” view, which we � rst proposed in 1993. Four major tenets of the incentive-sensitization view are discussed. These are: (1) potentially addictive drugs share the ability to alter brain organization; (2) the brain systems that are altered include those normally involved in the process of incentive motivation and reward; (3) the critical neuroadaptations for addiction render these brain reward systems hypersensitive (“sensitized”) to drugs and drug-associated stimuli; and (4) the brain systems that are sensitized do not mediate the pleasurable or euphoric effects of drugs (drug “liking”), but instead they mediate a subcomponent of reward we have termed incentive salience (drug “wanting”).

for me, because in Hong Kong you are surrounded by people who have known, since the days of Lao Tzu and Confucius, that selfhood is a social construct. In western philosophy, on the other hand,

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